Densely populated Bangladesh has shown tremendous advancement in empowering women in the society and bringing changes in traditional and conservative male dominated society. It was hardly believable in fifty years back that the women are working outdoors. Today more than four and a half million females are working in the garments industries alone. Their income is the major support for the family and thus the women are taking leadership in the family as well as in the societies. Many women entrepreneurs both in the cities and rural areas are growing. Women in education, politics, business, social development, agriculture, fisheries and other fields have significantly been increased. Women in administration, transportation, civil aviation, police and armed forces etc. are contributing largely. In the cultural sectors women have already dominated over the men. Moreover, women are the leaders of the houses as well as caring the family with love and affection and performing the ultimate leadership of the changes and development.

Landscape management is an integral part of natural conservation, food security and biodiversity; provides livelihoods and influences the climatic factors like humidity, temperature, precipitation and wind, and acts as an important component of disaster risk reduction. Landscapes provide safety against adverse conditions like cyclones, storms, droughts and floods etc. Undulated surface keeps the natural systems moving and provides increased surface area. Nature has its own laws and change is universal; still humans often govern the natural systems and their biased activities accelerate the changes including landscape. With rapid industrialization, urbanization and road transportation systems etc., many changes have occurred and most of the natural systems are being disturbed. Thus, climate change effects have accentuated the disasters like cyclones, tornadoes, tidal surges, floods, droughts and erosion. The landscape and the soil phases of the great Ganges, Brahmaputra and Meghna basins have been changed due to expansion of flatland irrigation-dependent agriculture destroying hills and hill forests, wet bodies; construction of dams and embankments, roads and highways across the floodplains and natural flows of streams and rivers. Traditional floodplain management systems were also destroyed for irrigating crop during and after the Green Revolution. The ponds were common in every home and the houses were built on the raised land and there were a nice synchronization for livelihoods and survival.
Therefore, to secure the lives, livelihoods need to manage natural systems wisely and logically. It is essential to conserve and maintain the significant or characteristic features of a landscape, which is greatly valued on account of its distinctive natural or cultural configuration. This paper reflects on the importance of the landscape in environmental sustainability and for a comprehensive disaster risk reduction (DRR) policy. It also analyzes the related issues ahead to achieve an effective landscape management policy for adoption of appropriate disaster risk reduction strategy.
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Severe local storms including tornadoes frequently occur in Bangladesh in the pre-monsoon season from March to May and kills and injures several thousands peoples in a year. Therefore, severe local storm is one of the most important natural hazards in Bangladesh (Hayashi and Yamane 2010, Yamane et al. 2010). The affected area of the severe local storm and the damaged region is concentrated in the very small region. Therefore, the meteorological data such as pressure and wind cannot be obtained because the weather observatories are not distributed in a fine spatial resolution. Fujita (1971) introduced the estimating scale of severe local storms, especially tornadoes, applying the tornado damages in the past of reports of NOAA, USA. This scale was made up on the basis of relationship between the wind speed and the damage in the tornadoes. This Fujita scale is utilized for the estimation of the intensity of the tornadoes in USA and other counties. According to Fujita scale the Brahmanbaria Tornado falls under F0.Continue reading →

Water is an indispensable natural resource without which existence of life is impossible. On an average a minimum quantity of 200 litres of water is used by each person a day. Plants absorb millions of liters of water everyday and about 95% transpirate to the atmosphere by using 5% only. A single tomato plant transpirates 150 liters of water in its lifetime, i.e. 3 to 4 months period only. Continue reading →

Some Thoughts on Sustainable Agriculture
Mohammed Ataur Rahman, PhD, M.Sc. and DIC
Director, Centre for Global Environmental Culture (CGEC)
IUBAT—International University of Business Agriculture and Technology
marahman@iubat.edu; www.iubat.edu
Abstract
Agriculture is the most vital program for the livelihoods of the human being as well as of its dependents. It started with the date of civilization and is progressing very fast to feed and support the growing population of the world. Many early civilizations like Mohenjo-Daro collapsed due to adoption of inappropriate cultural practices, mainly agriculture. Now, conventional so-called modern agriculture has also been reached at its climax and ruining the biodiversity by polluting the habitat. Soil is being eroded continuously and its capacity is decreasing day-by-day. Agricultural pollutants are now one of the important causes of climate change and the plants and animals are loosing their capability to resist from the environmental vulnerabilities. Continue reading →

Today Food Security is a widely- used common term and is often relating to Climate Change Effects. But it is a combination of many factors with the initial source of energy for all biological systems. In the process of photosynthesis, solar radiation energy is transformed into chemical energy; the later is then converted to mechanical and thermal energy through metabolism. Herbivorous obtains necessary energy by digesting plant tissue and reserves, while flesh-eating organisms digest animal food, through a number of links, called “food chain” which may be up to five and then the energy flow gradually abates as it passes through the ecosystem . However, the primary producers, the plants take carbon dioxide and oxygen from the air, and the other nutrients from the soil, the overall source, except a few exceptions of some aquatic plants where they can obtain nutrients from dissolved water.

Dhaka, an enclosed coastal megacity of the Bay of Bengal, with an average altitude of four meters above sea level, is regularly impacted by tropical cyclones and flooding, and has a very low capacity to adapt to climate change. Increased migrants from the highly populated coastal zones suffering from geo-hydro-meteorological disasters like erosion, floods and tidal surges, cyclones and tornados, and salinity intrusion etc., a huge population has migrated to the capital city for their livelihoods and it is one of the fastest growing megacities in the world. The historical cyclones and tidal surges like the Bhola Cyclone-1970, Bangladesh Cyclone-1991, Cyclone Sidr -2007, Cyclone Nargis -2008 and Aila – 2009 killed and displaced millions of people. Millions of domestic and wild animals died; damage to crops, forests and plantations and structural properties like houses, roads and highways, embankments, transmission lines were huge, there were outbreaks of epidemics, water shortages etc., causing many people to become homeless and hungry and driving them in desperation to Dhaka for food and shelter. To meet up the demand of land of the growing population, the city has spread outwards in an uncontrolled manner with slums and has been ranked as the second most unlivable city in the World Livability Survey 2011 according to the Economist Intelligence Unit.

This 25 years study on the changes of coastal zones from Chittagong to Cox’s Bazar along the Bay of Bengal studied changes of water-flow and the flora and fauna of the estuaries of the Karnaphuli, Halda, Sangu and Matamuhuri rivers, which flow down from the adjacent Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) and Arakan Lusai Hills. The hydroelectric dam on the Karnafuli River damaged 700 km² of hill forests and caused mass migration of tribal people.

Human pressure, deforestation, pollution, upstream dams, flatland cultivation practices, shrimp culture and unplanned infrastructures cause major causes to the coastal zones and adjacent hills. Destruction of mangroves of Chokoria Sundarbans and Cox’s Bazar are the result of shrimp culture. About 91% of the perennial streams of the Chittagong and CHT have lost their dry season flows, resulting in a serious water crisis. Discharge of effluents from the shrimp hatcheries, digging of shrimp ponds and hill-cuttings have caused erosion. The sea current has already damaged 3.4km of sea shore from Kolatoti to Himchari in Cox’s Bazar. Continue reading →